Elevating Child Care: A Guide To Respectful Parenting by Janet Lansbury

Author:Janet Lansbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Janet Lansbury, parenting, Early Childhood, RIE, Babies and Toddlers
Publisher: JLML Press
Published: 2014-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16: Nourishing Our Baby’s Healthy Eating Habits

If we are what we eat, then aren’t we also a product of the way we eat?

As busy new parents, we’re usually first focused on the mechanics of breast or bottle-feeding, then the intricacies of introducing solids: when to start, which foods, in what order, how much, and how to provide the best nutrition.

But most of us also hope to foster healthy eating behaviors in our children. We want to do all in our power to prevent eating disorders, childhood obesity, vitamin deficiencies, and even the subtler issues we parents struggle with like the impulse to clean our plates or eat for emotional reasons.

Humans are creatures of habit, and the first years in a child’s life are by far the easiest time to establish healthy ones. Here are some feeding suggestions advised by infant specialist Magda Gerber that help establish positive eating behaviors:

Relax, enjoy breast or bottle feedings. Make eating a focused, intimate, stress-free time together. Prepare the way for family dinners by making feedings a time for intimacy and social exchange. When we turn off the phone, computer, TV, and avoid other distractions to make feeding time sacred, we benefit our babies in several ways:

a) Babies are refueled by the loving attention they get while nursing or bottle-feeding to then enjoy time playing independently.

b) They learn that eating is a time to be mentally present rather than being taught to ignore the experience by a distracted parent.

c) Most importantly, our baby feels respected and valued when she is asked to actively participate in a feeding experience with us rather than just being fed.

I recently spoke with a mother who didn’t believe she should pay attention to her son while he breastfed because whenever she talked to him he stopped nursing. I thought what a polite boy to stop sucking to listen to what his mom was saying! It sounded to me like he was trying his best to engage.

Tune in and take care to not overfeed. Paying attention to our baby during feedings also helps develop her internal cues to signal fullness. A recent study reported in Science Daily concluded that “tuning in” comes more easily when we breastfeed because, according to researcher Katherine F. Isselmann, M.P.H., “...with breast-feeding, the ability to measure in ounces how much a baby has eaten isn’t there, so mothers can become more in tune with when their babies are done eating and babies are able to develop their own internal cues to signal when they feel full.”

The same study compared preschool-aged children who had been breastfed with those who had been bottle fed with pumped breast milk and found that breastfed children could more easily determine when they were full. They also had a lower body mass index (BMI) than those fed by bottle.

If we bottle-feed, we must make a concerted effort to tune in to our baby’s signals and be less focused on the ounces in the bottle.

Be careful with comfort food. Nursing a baby

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.